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Re: Python frontend?
- From: Andrew Haley <aph at redhat dot com>
- To: dewar at gnat dot com (Robert Dewar)
- Cc: jante_nord at yahoo dot co dot uk, gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 13:22:19 +0000
- Subject: Re: Python frontend?
- References: <20041101124708.93CA6F2834@nile.gnat.com>
Robert Dewar writes:
> > I think so. People have used jython with gcj. I don't know that a
> > special Python front end would result in much better performance or
> > convenience.
>
> Sure it would. The standard python interpretors are very slow. In
> class (my honors compiler class) we did a fast SPITBOL style
> compiler for Python generating x86 assembly language, and many
> programs ran 10-100 times faster.
Than an interpreter? Sure, you'd expect that.
> That was gnerating x86 asm, and with a run-time whose critical
> sections were hand written in x86 asm. You wouldn't do quite as
> well with a normal target indepednet interface yto gcc, but you
> could definitely get a huge improvement by generating code.
But gcj does generate code: that's the whole idea. The issue is how
much speed is lost by going via the Java .class file format. I admit
that I don't know.
Andrew.